"By presenting Lester's descent into madness as a gradual process of social disenfranchisement, McCarthy rejects the argument that social outsiders are born deviants; in fact, he implicates society as a main contributor to this social deviance from which it yearns to separate itself. To explore this topic of social injustice, McCarthy combines the tradition of British Gothicism with the realism of American Gothicism to create an updated version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." - 132
"Representations of the Other such as Frankenstein's Monster remain disconnected from readers and from society simply by their mythical nature. American Gothicism shares this goal of exposing the Other and society's condemnation of this subset of outsiders; however, American Gothicism employs what Irving Malin calls "reality" as a "distorted mirror." By representing the human Other, American Gothicism denies readers the opportunity to dismiss these outsiders completely."
" - 133. Cross-reference this with the several essays on fantastic literature in Clive Bloom.
"Betty T. Bennett in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction describes the Monster as "the living metaphor of [the] other" and asserts that he "expresses the position of anyone viewed as an outsider" (35-36); however, Bennett fails to account for the Monster's inhumanity that actually separates him from the human "outsider." As a being created from discarded body parts found in a "dissecting room and .. . [a] slaughter-house," the Monster only has a connection to death and to trauma (Shelley, 315)." Cf. King and Frankenstein as "total glandular meltdown." - 134
"Representations of the Other such as Frankenstein's Monster remain disconnected from readers and from society simply by their mythical nature. American Gothicism shares this goal of exposing the Other and society's condemnation of this subset of outsiders; however, American Gothicism employs what Irving Malin calls "reality" as a "distorted mirror." By representing the human Other, American Gothicism denies readers the opportunity to dismiss these outsiders completely."
" - 133. Cross-reference this with the several essays on fantastic literature in Clive Bloom.
"Betty T. Bennett in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction describes the Monster as "the living metaphor of [the] other" and asserts that he "expresses the position of anyone viewed as an outsider" (35-36); however, Bennett fails to account for the Monster's inhumanity that actually separates him from the human "outsider." As a being created from discarded body parts found in a "dissecting room and .. . [a] slaughter-house," the Monster only has a connection to death and to trauma (Shelley, 315)." Cf. King and Frankenstein as "total glandular meltdown." - 134